George Ernsberger

Neat collection that covers the entire spectrum of "fantasy" as it was defined in the world of pulp literature, from horror to science fiction to sword-and-sorcery. The horror stories alone span a pretty wide range, from the detached paranormal investigative style of Algernon Blackwood's "A Victim of Higher Space" to "The Voice in the Night," William Hope Hodgson's classic tale of fungal terror at sea. Science fiction (in the old-fashioned space opera style) is represented by C.L. Moore's show more oft-anthologized novella "Black Thirst," while Robert E. Howard introduces a proto-Conan swordsman in "The Witch from Hell's Kitchen." (That horrible title was affixed to the story after Howard's death; the author called it, much more appropriately, "The House of Arabu.") The best of the bunch is Thorp McClusky's "The Crawling Horror," a Lovecraft-style terror yarn originally published in Weird Tales.

Good stuff, for the most part. Three and a half stars. show less